March 2009
1 post
“People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought...”
– Soren Kierkegaard
February 2009
2 posts
I'm there...
Have you seen those red-dot commercials for state farm? Here is my red dot. I’m at the place where the possibility of going to law school in the fall keeps me from getting the kind of job that my bachelor’s degree and work experience has prepared me for because nobody wants to train an employee who will only be available for 6 months but said bachelor’s degree and experience also...
Another attempt at blogging
10 months later… and its been a weird year. To my surprise, I survived rejection from law school. Not that my life is now a huge success, because it isnt. I did however realize that life goes on, no matter what knocks you on your keester. Although I can’t say the past few months have been especially pleasant, they have forced me to grow. Most of my friends will be graduating from...
May 2008
1 post
Senior Speech
I recently graduated from Harding University (more on this later). We have a tradition at Harding to let graduating seniors use up an entire week of chapel to reminisce about their experiences. I was not selected for this honor. So, I took the liberty of posting a senior speech here, on this very neglected blog, for all of you suckers who still faithfully read it. Ahem. “I have been a...
March 2008
2 posts
A really good day
Today was a really great day. Thursdays are generally pretty great anyway, because they’re the only days that I don’t have an 8 am class, so I usually skip chapel and sleep an extra 2 hours. Today was even more special though, because my 10 am class was cancelled. Left with nothing obligatory to do until 11:30, I slept until 10, got up and had the laziest and most perfect morning. I...
February 2008
1 post
Well, we all see how that went
I’d like to make more shameless promises to keep blogging regularly, but for those of you who know me well, you understand. There is just very little hope of that happening. Ever. As it is, I will keep blogging irregularly, just to keep you guessing. :)
January 2008
2 posts
“Efficiency is intelligent laziness.”
– David Dunham
catching up
I’ve decided to keep blogging. We’ll see how it goes. OK, for a quick update: since my last post I spent one week, miserably sick, making my way towards London, then I flew across 7 time zones in 15 hours (though about 6 of those hours were lost in the shuffle). I slept for about a week straight, then travelled back and forth across the state of Texas to see my dad, my mom, my...
November 2007
15 posts
Thanksgiving
I said before that we were at Dauchau on Thanksgiving, and its true. What I didn’t say is that we celebrated Thanksgiving a week early, on the 15th. The Villa staff made it a really special occasion. The feast was phenomenal - They cooked a 28 pound turkey! We had the whole spread, yams, green bean casserole, turkey, ham, cranberries, cornbread casserole, stuffing - you name it. The dessert...
Oh the places I have been...
Its been two weeks since my last update, sorry for the negligence! Last week was our 2nd free travel opportunity. We spent two nights each in Venice, Salzburg, and Munich. Each city was beautiful in its own right. Logan and I planned the trip a few weeks in advance, so when Blake and Naomi jumped in at the last minute, we didn’t make too many revisions. We stayed in the hostels we had...
1 tag
Rome
We came, We saw, We conquered. We did as the Romans do. It was a fantastic four day trip! We saw the Colosseum, the Trevi Fountain, The arches of Titus, Constantine, and Septimus Severus, and several other attractions, both ancient and modern. We went to the Vatican City as well, and saw the museum, St. Peter’s Cathedral, and Pope Benedict XVI himself! Rome is truly a magical city.
“Time goes, you say? Ah no!
Alas, Time stays, we go.”
– Henry Austin Dobson
Remember me?
In exactly one month, I will be on a plane over the Atlantic Ocean. I am ready to be home, but I will never be ready to leave Florence. I have fallen in love with this place. The last few days have been fairly routine: we visited the church where Michelangelo was buried, we took a day trip to a medieval castle in the Appenines, and we went to the Bargello museum. I find myself trying to memorize...
Catching up
After returning from free travel last week, we are enjoying a couple of weeks at the villa. It’s been easy to forget that this semester is more than an extended vacation. Our purpose here in this wonderful place is studying. That realization hit us in the face this week, as we had a comprehensive Italian test, followed by a group presentation for Humanities on Wednesday, and a final for...
teaser
Life has been even more hectic than usual lately. Since my last post I have: taken 2 finals, celebrated my 21st birthday, encountered a problem with my schedule for this spring, added 2 classes to my shedule, dropped 3 classes from my schedule, regained some hope for my law school application, and adjusted my housing plans in response to a surfaced complication. In the meantime, I have also...
October 2007
12 posts
comments
I’m going to start making more slide-shows to post, so there will be more pictures with less space. With that, you can now add comments to my page through the slide-show. Either wait until the show ends, and click on the “comments” tab, or click “view all images” under the show, and comment in the provided box (it will open a new window).
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Free Travel
We returned from our first week of free travel late Thursday night. To clarify, our program has 3 built-in “vacations” during the semester. We get one week in October (last week), one in November, then an optional third break anywhere from 2-18 days in December. During this time our villa locks up and shuts down, so we must at the very least find a hostel to stay in. We aren’t...
Just another day in paradise...
Yesterday was yet another eventful day here at the Villa. We awoke early to harvest our very own olive grove. HUF owns 250 trees, but fortunately, we only had to pick from a portion of them. We divided into smaller teams and competed to see who harvested the most. My team lost, but we had a lot of fun trying. For each tree, we placed a parachute (real chutes that were used in WWII) around the...
Sicily
Its hard to believe its been 10 days since I last updated. Life has been beautiful but hectic here, which seems to be becoming the routine. We left Florence in the evening, last Monday, October 8. We chartered a bus to take us to the train station, then boarded our very first night train. There was an even mixture of excitement and anxiety as we found our cuchettas, six person sleeper cabins. My...
Cinque Terre
The last few days have been a whirlwind. We left Tuesday morning for day tours in Lucca and Pisa (Of course we took cheesy leaning tower pictures) then we rode on to Cinque Terre. The “5 lands” region of Italy has to be the most breathtaking place I’ve ever visited. We stayed in Vernazza, the 4th city. The most fantastic thing about this particular area is that the cities have...
Off to work we go...
Vineyards are such idyllic places. Today was like a scene out of “A Walk in the Clouds,” the cheesy Keanu Reaves flick from the late nineties. We had the unbelievable opportunity to harvest grapes in the main chianti district of Tuscany. We worked in a large hillside vineyard that belongs to a good friend of Robbie, our coordinator. Armed with ordinary kitchen knives from the villa, we...
September 2007
15 posts
Corri La Vita and The Plebs
Everyday is more eventful than the one before. Today was the Corri La Vita (Run for Life - a charity race / walk to benefit cancer research) in Florence. All of the HUF students participated, along with nearly 12,000 Italians and visitors. The walk was 6 K, and wound throughout some of the most beautiful areas of Florence. We started and finished at the church of Santa Croce (where...
L'Opera: Un Ballo de Maschera
Tonight I got the opportunity to see my very first Opera. I’m still processing it, even hours later. About a dozen of us went to the matinee showing of “Un Ballo de Maschero” or “A Masquerade Ball.” Its actually set in Boston, Massachusets, but it was written and performed in Italian. The experience was dramatically different than I imagined, but still incredible. I...
“But what minutes! Count them by sensation, and not by calendars, and each...”
– ~Benjamin Disraeli
San Gimignano and Siena
I’m going to start making these posts more recent. We’ve been doing so much that if I try to blog about everything thats happened in the last two weeks, then I won’t be able to write about all the newer, more exciting events. If there are a few duller days, I’ll do some flashbacks to catch up. Thursday morning we went to San Gimignano, then to Siena in the afternoon. San...
first impressions...
As I said, the program started off in a whirlwind. Our first day, after a brief orientation meeting, we began acquainting ourselves with our new home. We started down the hill around 9:00 in the morning as a group. I remember thinking about how conspicuous 40 white, wide-eyed young adults must look to the average Italian onlooker. Robbie Shackleford, the “dean” of Harding University...
“The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page.”
– St. Augustine
travel log...
I’ll start from the beginning. I left San Antonio, TX at 4 pm on September 11. I arrived in Detroit with just enough time to jog 60 gates down, meet up with the rest of the group, and board the overnight flight to Amsterdam. Since we were flying East towards the rising sun, the “night” only lasted a few hours. From Amsterdam we flew into Rome, arriving around 4 pm...
